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Tuesday, April 07, 2015

Guest Blog: Toxic Bad Boy by April Brookshire

The Evolution
from Wattpad Writer to Self-published Author

Back in 2009, I got back into reading
because the Twilight series had me interested in books again (this is likely a
common tale, although more recently it’s the Fifty Shades series). The Twilight
series was a modern version of The Vampire Diaries series I’d read back in the
90s as a kid. This had me moving on to reading other paranormal romance and
some historical romance (a new subgenre for me).

Somehow, I can’t remember now, I came
across a website called Wattpad. And the best part was that all the stories
were free! Many of the stories were about emo teens, which was trendy at the
time and amusing. As I browsed through different stories, I started coming up
with story ideas of my own. As I began writing and posting on Wattpad, my
stories were about a teen assassin, a vampire hunter, a rich girl getting
kidnapped and stepsiblings who fall in love.

To my surprise, my stories became
popular fast, ranking as high as one or two out of thousands of stories. My
followers on Wattpad continued to grow (31,000 at this time) and I was getting
millions of reads.

My favorite story of mine on Wattpad was
about the teenage female assassin. It was the first one I self-published in
2011. I spent a lot of time reworking and editing the story before doing so, renaming
it Young Love Murder after the lyrics of a song one of my Wattpad fans said
reminded her of it.

But my most popular story has always
been about the stepsiblings who fall in love. To date, it has ten million reads
total for all the chapters. When I decided to complete and self-publish it, the
task wasn’t small. Chapters I’d written for fun several years ago needed major
reworking if they were to be good enough for self-publishing.

So I edited, reworded, erased and added
to the original material and then completed Gianna and Caleb’s story. The
finished product is the Beware of Bad Boy series and the books in the series
have become Amazon Bestsellers in at least six countries.

I don’t know if I ever would’ve become a
self-published author if I hadn’t discovered Wattpad.

Toxic Bad Boy

Beware of Bad Boy Trilogy

Book 3

April Brookshire

Genre: mature young adult contemporary romance

Date of Publication: March 30th, 2015

Number of pages: 220

Word Count: 70,000

Book Description:

Caleb and Gianna’s lives were ruined by a brutal attack. She ended up in the hospital and he was thrown in juvie.

For Caleb, being apart from Gianna is worse torture than being locked up. He’s unable to help her through the aftermath of the assault and dealing with the confinement of youth corrections.

Gianna is lost, her mind going to dark places. She loves and misses Caleb, but doesn’t know how to deal with the upheaval and panic attacks. Emerging, are new threats to her safety and her relationship with Caleb.

While Gianna struggles with her ability to be Caleb’s girlfriend after he’s released, Caleb struggles to hold on to the only girl he’s ever loved.

This is the third book and conclusion to the Beware of Bad Boy series.

About the Author:

April Brookshire is the author of the Beware of Bad Boy and Young Assassins series. She also co-authors the Dead Chaos series. She writes under the contemporary romance and apocalyptic fantasy genres and has a few projects in the works for 2015.

Growing up with four brothers, she doesn’t like chick flicks but devours romance books of all genres. A book addict, she’s read almost two thousand books to date.

April lives in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, where she raises her young son. When she isn’t writing, she’s usually reading, but also enjoys attending concerts and plays in the numerous venues of the city.